The Real Reason People Aren't Reading: The Books Are Bad

In a great little article in the Guardian today Gabriel Josipovici (right) an ex prof of comparative lit at Oxford University "condemned the work of the giants of the modern English novel as hollow. He said they were like 'prep-school boys showing off' and virtually indistinguishable from one another in scope and ambition."

As dedicated readers of this blog will no doubt be fed up hearing this is exactly my thesis: rich kids can't write. Initially I tarred both sides of the Atlantic with the same brush but commenters have convinced me that this is more of an English phenomenon than an American one. Private school boys and especially boarding school boys are cut off from the complexity of everyday life by their seclusion in a narrow caste and thus their attempts to produce great art almost always fail, getting bogged down in "cleverness" and a disenchantment with post school life. While 5% of the English population goes to private school (and less than 2% to boarding school) the upper echelons of the BBC, the national newspapers, the TLS etc. are filled with this so called "cream of the crop" which is a self perpetuating and self promoting oligarchy. (The current UK Prime Minister, of course, has never had a real job and he went to Eton and Oxford as did many of his cabinet. And so it goes...) I think Josipovici talks a lot of sense so I'm quoting a big chunk of the Guardian's article below. (I do think he's wrong about Rushdie, however. To me Midnight's Children is a work of genius and genius seems to blossom no matter how barren or plush the circumstances):

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The fact that such writers [Amis etc] had won so many awards was "a mystery", to Josipovici. He added: "It's an ill-educated public being fed by the media – 'This is what great art is' – and they lap it up." It is a view apparently now shared by at least some others, given that the latest offerings by Martin Amis, McEwan and Rushdie were among the more prominent omissions from this year's Man Booker longlist, revealed earlier this week. "We are in a very fallow period," Josipovici said, calling the contemporary English novel "profoundly disappointing – a poor relation of its ground-breaking modernist forebears".

He said: "Reading Barnes, like reading so many other English writers of his generation – Martin Amis, McEwan – leaves me feeling that I and the world have been made smaller and meaner. The irony which at first made one smile, the precision of language which was at first so satisfying, the cynicism which at first was used only to puncture pretension, in the end come to seem like a terrible constriction, a fear of opening oneself up to the world. "I wonder, though, where it came from, this petty-bourgeois uptightness, this terror of not being in control, this schoolboy desire to boast and to shock." Such faults were less generally evident in Irish, American, or continental European writing, he added.

Laurence Sterne's 18th-century novel Tristram Shandy remained more avant-garde than the so-called avant-garde today, Josipovici argued. "An author like Salman Rushdie takes from Sterne all the tricks without recognising the darkness underneath. You feel Rushdie's just showing off rather than giving a sense of genuine exploration."

Referring to graduates, like McEwan, of the University of East Anglia's famous creative writing course, Josipovici said: "They all tell stories in a way that is well crafted, but that is almost the most depressing aspect of it — a careful craft which seems to me to be hollow." He singled out The Comfort of Strangers, McEwan's story of obsession, as easy to read but lacking "a sense of destiny, of other worlds suggested but lying beyond words...One finishes them and feels, 'So what?' – so very different from the gut-wrenching experience of reading Herman Melville's Bartleby." Josipovici extended his criticism to one of the behemoths of modern US writing, Philip Roth. "For all Roth's playfulness – a heavy-handed playfulness at the best of times – he never doubts the validity of what he is doing or his ability to find a language adequate to his needs. As a result, his works may be funny, they may be thought-provoking, but only as good journalism can be funny and thought-provoking."

Overall, he said, while the likes of Kafka were plagued by self-doubt, his modern peers seemed arrogant and self-satisfied, "which is mildly depressing". Many of the authors named by Josipovici are published by Random House. A spokesman for the publisher said: "Obviously we wouldn't agree. I don't think the authors would want to comment either."

It's the little things that you miss

I've been in Australia for two years now and everything is going swimmingly. However, much to my surprise, I have found that I miss squirrels. There are no squirrels in Australia except for an alleged small feral population that escaped from Perth Zoo, so that doesn't really count does it? Yes, as Dame Edna will tell you there are cute little possums everywhere, but they are nocturnal creatures that you seldom see in daylight and in twilight their silhouette is the same as a Norwegian rat which is not pleasant.
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As Catullus said of his main squeeze: odi et amo, which is pretty much how I feel about squirrels. I've been crapped on by a squirrel before and twice the same squirrel (I suspect) broke in through an open window in my rooms at university and scattered cereal all over the place. Yet now that they're not around I miss the little perishers, especially the adorable wee red ones that you'd see in woods in the north of England. Melbourne zoo does not have a squirrel exhibit although I think it would prove very popular, so I suppose I'll just have to get my squirrel fix here.

Alex "The Hurricane" Higgins 1949 - 2010

From the obituary in today's Scotsman:

Trying to tell someone what Higgins was like at the table is like attempting to say why Best, or Pele, or Muhammad Ali was so great. Like them we can see the pictures, but you cannot explain the sheer buzz, the electric atmosphere that crackled even in the practice rooms when Higgins strolled forward, chalking his cue and checking the balls, playing out the next 20 shots in his mind with the dexterity of a chess grand master.

Then he would bend over and zip, zap and zoom – ball after ball would crack into a pocket, or else he would craft a deliciously slow drop to place the white bang in line for the next shot. It was mesmeric stuff. You could not take your eyes off him as he compiled break after break, and it was all the product of the greatest natural talent snooker has ever seen. . .Higgins was there first and foremost, blasting opponents off the table, and that, and not the pernicious headlines, is why he is a legend.
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For us kids growing up in Northern Ireland in the 70's and 80's there were only two idols: George Best and Alex Higgins. Both were flamboyant, outrageous, gifted; both to some extent squandered their talent on drink, women, gambling and self destruction. Still, when they were good they were very very good. George Best now has an airport named after him. There's a nice summary of the good, bad and ugly of Higgins in his obit in The Independent, here.

Quantum of Suck

The movie channels have been free all this week for some reason so I've managed to catch up on half a dozen films I hadn't seen. These "reviews" are just off the cuff so it aint gonna be Pauline Kael.

1. Termination IV: Ok, I liked this. The rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 32% which is pretty disastrous, but I thought it was just fine. Sam Worthington was excellent, the story moved in a logical and straightforward way and the action was good. Christian Bale is always fun to watch and I liked McG's steal from War of the Worlds with the buckets of humans in the big machines. B-

2. Public Enemies: This went on far too long and he escaped from one prison too many but it had Johnny Depp in it and it was directed by Michael Mann. Not bad B-

3. Quantum of Solace: These guys are clearly geniuses. I mean how can you make a boring James Bond film? You've got girls, gadgets, action and yet this was an enormous yawn fest from start to finish. No, I didn't follow the plot or believe any of it. And can Daniel Craig do anything else apart from purse his lips? At one point they make an escape in an economy car and it looked like one of those Mazda ads you see around Christmas time. Too much M, too many phone conversations. Too many boring characters. He rides a motorbike like an eejit. There's no humor or chemistry. Ugh. F

4. The International: I watched this film for half hour wondering when Julia Roberts was going to show up. Clive Owen and Naomi Watts are upset about the bankers so they chase them down to Lyons (?) and he washes his face by filling a sink with bags of ice and shoving his whole head in there. Everyone mumbles a lot. Brent's boss from The Office is in it. Thats about all I can remember. C-

5. Spring Breakdown: Parker Posey's in this and Christopher Knight from the Brady Bunch. Three middle aged women go to Spring Break. That was their one idea. They had nothing else. Painful. F

6. The Day The Earth Stood Still. The original of course was one of the greatest sci-fi films of the 50's. The remake has Don Draper in it, Keanu Reeves and the lovely Jennifer Connelly. In the olden days a sci fi plot and Jennifer Connelly's eyebrows would have been enough for me but not anymore. It also proves that without Peggy Don Draper is nothing. D-

Gunshot Road

My review of Adrian Hyland's new novel from yesterday's Melbourne Age

Gunshot Road - Adrian Hyland

At its best crime writing is a lens through which we can view society, analysing its flaws and follies while allowing ourselves to relax in a genre that is both familiar and comfortable. Crime fiction has its rules and tropes but colouring within the box of these conventions a skilful writer can take us to places that even literary fiction dare not go. Adrian Hyland is well on the path to becoming such a writer; his second novel, Gunshot Road, the sequel to the Ned Kelly Award winning Diamond Dove is the continuation of the story of Emily Tempest a young, attractive half white, half Aboriginal woman from the desert town of Bluebush in the Northern Territory.
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At the start of Gunshot Road Tempest is just beginning her first day on the job as an Aboriginal Community Police Officer. Tempest’s boss, the sympathetic Superintendent McGillivray is going to ease her in gently, but he is sucker punched in a brawl and sent to the hospital. In one of the many delicious little ironies in the novel, McGillivray’s bedside reading material is Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee - the story of a once proud aboriginal people marginalised and penned in squalid reservations.
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Tempest is forced to work with Acting Superintendent Cockburn, a man less in sympathy with the native peoples and their problems. A case of two drunken elderly prospectors - one of whom allegedly killed the other - is Tempest’s first investigation and although it seems like a simple affair to Cockburn she notices inconsistencies and begins – literally - digging deeper. Enter a mysterious Chinese geologist, a pattern of rocks which is really a map and a shaman from the desert who everyone assumed was dead years ago. Mining is an important piece of the puzzle in Gunshot Road and we are treated to a fascinating insight into the geological diversity and richness of the red heart of Australia. But the meat of the book, of course, is Emily herself, a woman of two worlds: contemporary white Australia and an Aboriginal culture that goes back tens of thousands of years.
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Recent fictional treatments of Aboriginal life by non Aboriginals have seldom been that interesting because they err on the side of caution, often treating the indigenous peoples as if they are living exhibits in a kind of Stone Age spiritual museum. Hyland’s novel however explores some of the problems that others shy away from such as endemic alcoholism, petty violence and spousal abuse. I actually think he could have gone further into this territory without losing the reader: he mentions in passing punitive police raids and jail suicides, but holds back from the full gravity of such experiences, keeping his tone relatively light and chatty. Although this is comparing apples and oranges you are unlikely to put down Gunshot Road seething with anger the way you do with Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.
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Tempest uses her local knowledge, her intimate relationship with the land and her deep understanding of human nature to eliminate a few red herrings and make real progress with the case. The further her quest takes her away from the claustrophobic world of the “whitefellas” the better I liked the book. Hyland too seems to relish the harsh bush of secret water holes and mythic landscapes. Here is his description of an incident at a fire ceremony:

I’d thought I was ready for her, a part of me was. But another part was mesmerised, staring with dazzled fascination at the river of light the torch left in its wake. In that shimmering arc I saw galaxies and golden fish, splinters and wings, crystal ships. I saw the song we’d just been singing.

I could have done with more of these scenes that are “very Territory” and are utterly engrossing; in compensation Hyland could perhaps have eased up a little on the broad humour (I certainly hope that he’s got all the Ron Jeremy jokes out of his system now).
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Before I began Diamond Dove I did wonder if a middle aged white man from the Melbourne suburbs could really get inside the head of a twenty something girl from a splintering Aboriginal mob on the edge of the spinifex bush, but two books in I am reassured. Unless you are very picky indeed your disbelief will not be unsuspended. Experienced crime readers will figure out the mystery a little earlier than Emily Tempest does, but this does not detract from a novel which is rich, lyrical and moving. The Text Publishing Company are offering readers an accountant confounding “love it or your money back” guarantee, but my guess is that this is one of the safer financial gambles that they’ll take all year.

Killer Thrillers

Somehow Dead I Well May Be has been long listed as one of National Public Radio's "Killer Thrillers". I say somehow because unlike every other book on the list Dead I Well May Be isn't even in print anymore. Well done Simon and Schuster! It is nice to be nominated by NPR though; a few years ago I voted hard for Ella Fitzgerald on their list of greatest female singers of all time. If you want to vote for me you can do so over at NPR here. Of course you can also go over to NPR to vote for someone else too. There are a few interesting choices on there. Slainte.

The Real Reason For The Belfast Riots

It just happens to be the oldest reason in the world:

From the Associated Press:

A prominent Catholic priest at the center of the main rioting area, [the] Ardoyne in north Belfast, said he feared that the latest rioting chiefly reflects the collapse of parental responsibility in local households, not any deep-seated political agenda. The Rev. Gary Donegan said violence that continued until 2 a.m. Wednesday in [the] Ardoyne featured rioters aged 8 to 18 — backed by crowds of girls capturing the mayhem on their cell phones for posting on social networking Web sites.

"Recreational rioting is the term," the 46-year-old priest said. "It was like a Disney theme park for rioting. It was ludicrous."

Donegan said he and local Ardoyne authority figures — among them Irish Republican Army veterans once involved in directing, not stopping, riots — tried all night to take rocks, bottles and stones out of children's hands, but the kids wouldn't listen. Donegan said he particularly talked to a 9-year-old boy who had walked a mile (2 kilometers) that night to reach the rioting zone. "I thought to myself: Where are your parents? Who's supervising you?" he said in a telephone interview.

The priest said girls, many of them dressed for a night out — "At one stage it looked like a Milan catwalk," he quipped — had come to watch the boys riot. The boys in turn appeared determined to impress the girls with their bravery. He said alcohol and drug abuse fueled their dangerous behavior as police doused the crowd with jets from a water cannon.

He said IRA dissidents opposed to Northern Ireland's peace process undoubtedly have played a background role in stoking the past three nights' rioting, which has spread to several other working-class Catholic parts of Belfast and other towns. But the priest said he and Ardoyne community leaders were openly questioning whether the area's children would have sought street fights with police even if the cited catalyst for the trouble — a small Orange parade near [the] Ardoyne on Monday night — had been barred by police. "That's the burning question for us," he said. "I saw children facing down what would have been hardened mainstream (IRA) republicans of yesteryear who are now full weight behind the peace process, and they were taking (abuse) from these young people who were literally out of control."

Eight Westerns

I was watching For A Few Dollars More last night on Fox Classics and remembering what a great film it is; and so, in honour of that, here's a little list of my eight favourite Westerns. Why eight and not ten? Take your pick: laziness or a tribute to Paul the Psychic Octopus?

8. High Noon. Carl Foreman's screenplay, Grace Kelly's close ups, the badge in the dirt, the action playing out in real time. If you don't like this film, I'm sorry, I just don't know who you are anymore.

7. The Searchers. Just about the only John Wayne film I can enjoy these days. Funny, dark, broody and beautiful. John Ford at the top of his game.

6. Paris, Texas. A guy is wandering in the desert. He has amnesia. The good news is that he was married to Nastassia Kinski. The bad news is that he tied her to a fridge and she set their trailer home on fire. His mission is to ride into town, bring mother and son together, ride out of town. BTW, there is no safety zone, apparently.

5. Unforgiven. Clint's mission is to ride into town, kill a couple of dudes, and, er, ride out of town. It all goes to hell and then it rains. David Peoples wrote the script, Richard Harris stole the show. Gene Hackman was pretty good too.

4. Blazing Saddles. Richard Pryor was the unsung hero here and with him this might have been the greatest movie of all time. Still there's the beans, the Nazis, the governor, Maddy Khan. What a flick. 1974 was some kind of Wunderjahr for Mel Brooks and then, alas, zilch.

3. For a Few Dollars More. Best of the spaghetti three. They laugh, they cry, they shoot each other's hats. . .Then the wonderful Gian Maria Volontè breaks out of jail, robs the bank at El Paso and after that it's all: laaah, laaah, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, dada, dah, dah, laaah, laaah, la, la, la, la, la, la, laaah etc.

2. The Wild Bunch. Sam Peckinpah says that this is what happens when men go down to Mexico. When I went down to Mexico I did some nice snorkeling and drank margheritas but when MEN go down there, they machine gun entire armies of baddies. In slow motion. Brilliant.

1. Blood Meridian. They havent actually made this film yet but the movie of it in my head is awesome.

I Have No Idea What This Dude Is Saying

But he hasn't mentioned Paul the octopus

This Is The Second Sexiest Irish Crime Writer?

(another post from two years ago)
According to a rigorously scientific poll on Declan Burke's Crime Always Pays last week, I, apparently, am the second sexiest Irish crime writer after the fragrant John Connolly. From this August 2003 picture you can see why I got so many votes: the stylish Krusty the Clown hair, the glazed Deliverance-like sociopath expression, the pirate shirt. . .What's even more comforting about Mr. Burke's poll is that it means that I am the sexiest Northern Irish Crime Writer, a thing conference organisers should bear in mind when they're looking for their next guest speaker at the Tahitian Crime Fest. What's also great about the award is the fact that Colin Bateman for one must be furious, I mean would he trade the awards, bestsellers, film and TV success for the title of Sexiest Northern Irish Crime Writer? Of course he would! Next year the competition is going to be even tougher with trendily bearded Stuart Neville and boyish kung fu master Gerard Brennan entering the lists.
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The lady with me in the pic? Professor Leah Garrett, mother of my children, god help them.

July 4, Luna Park, St Kilda, Australia

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Wednesday update.

Comment Problems.

Blogger has been eating comments. Sorry about that folks. I have complained to Google and I'm sure this will be fixed soon, as per their track record of fast and efficient response. Yes. I am being sarcastic.

House To House

I think Anglo-American fiction since World War 2 has largely failed to capture the zeitgeist of life in the UK and US because the literary big guns tend to come from privileged backgrounds (in the UK they often went to boarding school before Oxbridge). White collar kids will never understand blue collar life, whereas working class kids can easily get the nuances of high culture when they're exposed to it. Dickens grew up poor and became rich, which is why all aspects of society was open to him. Your Rushdies, DeLillos, Amises and Barneses all grew up comfortably middle or upper class and thus there is a whole aspect of society forever beyond their ken. And when rich kids do try to slum it it's never really convincing. Similarly I think this is why all the Iraq movies I have seen have been terrible. I watched Green Zone last week and it joined a long list of dreadful pictures which are very good at giving you lectures and very poor about telling you anything of value about Iraq. Green Zone was nearly as bad as Lions for Lambs and that's saying something. But there are a lot of other godawful Iraq movies out there from the Brits, the Americans and even the French. Admittedly The Hurt Locker wasn't dreadful but I didn't love that picture the way everyone else seems to have done. Perhaps film is a poor medium for telling the complicated story of Iraq or perhaps the cloistered elites who run the film industry just don't understand what it's like to be a grunt on the ground. As I say, you'll never really understand blue collar life unless you grew up in that world.

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House to House, a book I read last week, however, does feel authentic and captures well not just what battle is like but also the class war that exists in the army between the private soldier and the officers. With a few exceptions officers are seen as a spoiled, effete cadre, while the real killing and the real dying is done by ordinary guys not too long out of high school from all over the US; guys who seem to share only one thing and that is the modest circumstances of their background. House to House is the non fiction story of the Battle of Falluja in November 2004, told not from a tactical or strategic perspective but through the eyes of a staff sergeant in the unglamorous US Second Infantry. SSg David Bellavia is indeed a blue collar guy but no ignorant grunt. Hailing from upstate New York Bellavia was a theatre major in college until his production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, rewritten to give the assassins' real motives for their attacks on the US presidents, was halted by Sondheim's lawyers. One thing led to another and Bellavia found himself in the US Army and then at the dreadful Battle of Falluja when 100 US troops were killed, 1000 injured and up to 1000 insurgents killed or captured. House to House is only the story of what Bellavia saw and experienced and does not go into the alleged use of white phosphorous, the attacks on civilians, or indeed the ultimate futility of the Rumsfeld strategy in Iraq from 2004 onwards. It is however a gripping, terrifying account of private soldiers and their NCO's moving through the town of Falluja, house by house, street by street and sector by sector, all the while coming under fire by dedicated mujahadeen of various factions. If you want to know what modern war is like I'd avoid the movie versions and the accounts by officers and pick up House to House instead.